


other people

by jiaras



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks)-centric, Mutual Pining, Past Child Abuse, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:15:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29813127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiaras/pseuds/jiaras
Summary: ‘’JJ?’’ Kiara asked as her arm went around his neck, her fingers tangled in the messy hair at his nape. ‘’Do you like me?’’And Kiara couldn’t deny she felt awfully juvenile asking him so, but she also figured it was worth it when he broke the kiss to stare deep into her brown eyes and say, ‘’Course,’’ he traced a finger along her jaw, ‘’The most. Always.’’• • •ORThe story of JJ and Kiara over the span of nearly a decade, the good and the bad, the breakups and the make-ups and everything in between.(very loosely based on ''Normal People'' by Sally Rooney)
Relationships: JJ & Kiara (Outer Banks), JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 76





	1. that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions

**Author's Note:**

> and here it is!! this story is kind of my baby so I hope y'all enjoy it!  
> strongly recommend listening to this playlist while you read: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Z5U6DX6jutX1pepMxgkDP?si=TpAZFsANR_WtkeHqMhJZdw
> 
> chapter titles are all sentences from Normal People (by the way, no need to have watched the show/read the book Normal People to read this fic! I just used it as inspo)

Kiara unblocked JJ on Instagram.

She knew he had five more pictures on his feed since the last time she had unblocked him, over a year ago. Took a quick peek — one of him alone out in the water, holding a blue surfboard under his arm and doing the hang loose sign. A couple of years back, Kiara would undoubtedly have not-so-jokingly commented that that was the cringiest thing in the world, but considering where they stood, it didn’t seem right for her to even like the picture, let alone leave a comment. 

Second pic was of him and John B at the place she believed to be that one open mic club over in Kill Devil Hills — Kiara remembered the floors were constantly sticky thanks to what she hoped was spilled beer, and that JJ loathed how loud it was because it made the constant buzzing in his head all the more unbearable. Why he had gone there of all places with John B for a night out, she had no clue, but it didn’t look recent, John B’s hair longer than it had been for many months.

Third pic, he was with a girl.

Kiara blocked him again on impulse, a weight pressing on her chest and leaving her out of breath even though she was doing nothing but sitting in the passenger seat of her father’s brand new Chevy Tahoe. 

‘’Everything all right, pumpkin?’’ Mike asked, back straightened against the leather seat. His thick, pointed black beard had always shown flecks of grey, but it seemed to have turned into more of a grey beard with flecks of black since the last time they had video chatted. ‘’You’re looking a little pale.’’

Kiara pinched the bridge of her nose as if pressing a button to regain consciousness. ‘’Yeah, I’m fine,’’ she said, ‘’Just jet-lagged, is all.’’

She figured she could’ve tried harder to sound more believable (whoever knew Kiara also knew she wasn’t one to get jet-lagged), but her father didn’t seem inclined to keep pushing. Instead, he placed his palm on her knee tenderly, the way he always used to when she was a little girl. 

‘’It’s good that you’re here, Kiara.’’ He said, attentive eyes on the road.

‘’You know that I have to be back in three weeks, right?’’ She felt the need to remind him, more than used to Mike and Anna leaving not-so-subtle hints that she should move back to the Outer Banks for good.

He removed his hand from her knee to scratch his silver beard. ‘’I know, I know,’’ Mike sighed, ‘’But three weeks is better than nothing. We’ve all missed you.’’

‘’I’ve missed you too.’’ Kiara admitted, weirdly even longing for the comments her mother was sure to make over her choice in clothing. 

Sarah had once said that no matter how far you were or for how long, whenever you did return ( _and you would_ ), the Outer Banks would still be just the same. Kiara was certain her friend was right — nearly two years since she had last set foot on the island and she could spot the same kitschy shops and craft eateries, smell the same mixture of salt water and freshly cut grass, find the same groups of Kooks driving around with golf equipment in their SUVs and the kids from the Cut slow walking on the winding boardwalk with spliffs hanging from their mouths, beers inside brown paper bags. It was the Outer Banks, all right.

Kiara kicked off her sandals and placed her bare feet on the dashboard, ignoring the side-eye her father gave her when she did so. Stared down at her phone and let her thumb rest on top of that goddamned blue unblock button for a minute too long before pressing down on it. 

Unblocked JJ on Instagram once again, more sure of herself this time. Even clicked on the picture with the girl, wanting to see it on the full 6.1-inch screen of the new phone she had just gotten the past week (for work purposes _only_ , of course, because Kiara wasn’t about to be a consumerist sellout just yet). 

They were sitting on the front of a boat Kiara didn’t recognize, that seemed just a bit too clean and luxurious for it to belong to JJ. His arms were wrapped around her waist, drawing her so close their cheeks were touching, bright smiles merging together. In typical JJ fashion, there was no caption, just a handful of seemingly random emojis all in blue and yellow, but at least the red-haired girl was tagged.

Gwen Horvath, private page, a couple thousand followers and hundreds of pictures Kiara not-so-admittedly was _dying_ to see, but couldn’t thanks to whoever first decided allowing people to private their accounts was a good idea. Her bio was short, giving Kiara no information on her apart from the fact that she was from somewhere in the UK and considered herself to be 60% a Gryffindor, 30% a Hufflepuff and 10% a Ravenclaw. Kiara rolled her eyes. _Pick one, like any normal person would_. 

But then she silently cussed herself, thinking that it wasn’t at all feminist of her part to have something against this girl she never even met only for having been pictured with JJ. Sure, he had his relaxed arms around her waist, but she was probably just a friend. And sure, their faces were so close together that a slight movement from one could make their lips connect, but she was most definitely _not_ his girlfriend. Right?

JJ didn’t have girlfriends. JJ didn’t have girlfriends who weren’t Kiara.

_Right?_

She was about to fall down a rabbit hole, she could tell. The other new picture was of a dog, an Australian Shepherd with eyes just as blue as JJ’s, and Kiara was not too opposed to overanalyzing the female hand holding on to the dog’s collar, just to make sure whether the ballerina nails painted teal fit the ones of a certain Gwen Horvath. She was pretty sure she could spot the mysterious girl on the background of the fifth and final picture as well, strands of her autumn coloured hair floating around JJ’s chest as he smiled for a selfie while lying in bed. 

She blocked JJ again, tucked her phone in the front pocket of her Tortuga travel backpack and turned on the car radio. Settled on that one station that only played 80s rock songs, and let Mike join her on a rendition of _Crazy Little Thing Called Love_ for the rest of the ride.

The Carrera’s home down in Figure 8 had not changed one bit, save it for the fresh floral arrangements all around that used to be made in shades of red and pale pink, and were now in lilac and lavender. Even her mother had been standing by the front door waiting patiently, sipping on a glass of sweet tea and fixing up her hair whenever a breeze dared mess it up, just the way she always would when Kiara was a teenager and stayed out past her curfew with the Pogues.

‘’Oh, you are here, finally,’’ Anna cried out in excitement, setting the sweating ice cold glass on the porch and walking towards the Tahoe. ‘’You look wonderful, just wonderful,’’ she opened the door for Kiara as the girl grabbed her sandals from the beige mat. ‘’Is that a work shirt?’’

Kiara smoothed down the hem of her shorts that had ridden up during the car ride. ‘’No, mom,’’ she let out an exasperated sigh, ‘’It’s just a shirt.’’

One of JJ’s old shirts, to be exact. She did feel kind of morbid wearing his stuff sometimes (she had kept a total of two shirts, one sweatshirt, a pair of boxers and his favorite black and white bandana), but they were soft and comfortable and made her feel at home, so fuck it. He didn’t need anything to remember her — he had stayed in the Outer Banks, and Kiara and the OBX were, more often than not, one and the same. She was the one who needed these stupid mementos most, as embarrassing as that sounded even in her own head.

Anna gave her a side hug made awkward by the fully packed backpack on Kiara’s right shoulder. The trunk closed with a loud thud, Mike struggling with the few heavy bags Kiara had brought, each one mostly filled with dirty laundry and cheap souvenirs.

Her room looked the same as well, it had since she was 18 and left for college. Most people would never guess it, but Anna Carrera was sentimental like that — when her only daughter packed her bags and left for the first time, the one big room by the left, on the second floor, became a big shrine to Kiara. Not even the ‘ _Sorry, we’re Stoned_ ’ poster, the tie dye Lokta paper lantern and the moon and the sun orange tapestry had been moved, though Anna wasn’t secretive about loathing them. 

As Mike and Anna busied themselves preparing Kiara a long-awaited home-cooked meal (since although she knew _how_ to cook, it’s not like she exactly had _time_ for it), Kiara was instantly attracted towards the memory board hung to the wall by the window. Let the backpack fall from her shoulder and took a step forward, thinking back to a 15-year-old Kiara buying the board on eBay under the pretense that it’d be used as a vision board, and then 16-year-old Kiara adding nothing but movie tickets, notes, dried flowers and pictures of her friends. Pictures of JJ.

And really, if her entire room was a shrine to Kiara, then the memory board was a shrine to JJ. It made sense of course, timeline-wise, that a high school aged Kiara would make sure to include her fair share of pictures of JJ (some of just him, that she took when he wasn’t looking, and some of them, his arms around her waist), little drawings that JJ had gifted her over the years (most of great white sharks and dolphins and turtles made on yellow notebook paper), and even a blue sage smudge stick he got her for her 17th birthday. 

Her favourite picture was right in the middle, next to a string of fairy lights even Sarah had once called _basic as fuck_. All of the Pogues were in it, at the Boneyard, kicking off the last summer before everyone (or almost everyone) was supposed to leave the OBX — they all had their arms around each other, but there was something about the way JJ looked at Kiara from one extremity and Kiara looked right back at him from the other, both leaning forward as if they couldn’t stand being separated by two bodies between them, mouths curved into childlike smiles that said ‘ _Hey, we know something that you guys don’t_ ’. It always seemed to Kiara like the best representation of what their relationship was like in school.

It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t, truly. Because how many hook-ups when you’re 17 really matter? Fuck, how many _relationships_ , even? Not many, and that Kiara knew for sure. She had looked it up once, a few months into her senior year, _how many high school relationships last past graduation?_ , as if a positive answer would’ve changed the outcome. It was 5%, by the way — sometimes she forgot the day of her own birthday, but she never forgot that number, that stupid 0,05 taunting her from afar. 

Kiara also remembered knowing it wouldn’t be them. Because, hey, Sarah and John B were definitely not breaking up after graduation, and so what were the odds that the only two high school couples to make it out of the Outer Banks would be Pogues? And they weren’t really a couple, even, which just made matters worse. She should’ve looked up _how many high school friends with benefits last past graduation?_

Who knows, maybe the results would’ve been more optimistic. 

Maybe not.

  
  
• • • **7 years before** • • •

  
  
  


‘’Hey, everyone, get closer, Kie and JJ are out of frame,’’ Sarah commanded, having a hard time holding on to her brand new phone and the straw hat that threatened to fly off her head with the wind. ‘’And JJ, can you at least _try_ to look a little bit happy?’’ 

JJ took his hat off, ran a hand through his blond hair. ‘’Who says I’m not happy?’’ He glanced at Kiara, for no more than half a second. She did always say he looked better in pictures without his hat on.

‘’ _Duh_ , your face,’’ Sarah scoffed, prompting Pope to quietly complain about how he couldn’t hold the smile for much longer. John B hit him with a calf kick from behind, but Pope still kept smiling, all teeth and dimples. ‘’Seriously, JJ, we’re not high-schoolers anymore. The brooding look is not going to keep getting you girls much longer.’’

Kiara giggled, and JJ sent her a playful glance. ‘’Let me tell you this look has gotten the fuckin’ hottest chick in the OBX.’’

Sarah crossed her arms, and Pope just as much as cried out, something about his face hurting so bad from smiling he was about to need cheek transplants. ‘’Oh, really?’’ she teased, ‘’And who would that lucky girl be?’’

Kiara fiddled with her many bracelets, pulled at the loose strings. _He wouldn’t_. Would he?

‘’You know what they say,’’ JJ stretched his arms as if the little exchange had been boring him to death. ‘’Eat quietly and you get a second serving. And then a third, and a fourth, and a—’’

‘’Jesus, fine, I get it.’’ Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust, brown eyes narrowed, and John B pretended to gag. Thankfully, they were all too busy to notice the way JJ turned to Kiara and winked, a boyish grin on his face.

Pope complained again, louder this time, and made sure to point out that he only had another ten seconds of smiling before his jaw dislocated. That seemed to be enough for Sarah to lift her phone up again, and as the counted down, the Pogues said ‘ _cheese_ ’ in unison, happy smiles in place. 

Except Pope and John B smiled at the camera, while JJ and Kiara smiled at each other.

Thing was, for the past three years, the pair had been keeping a secret. A huge motherfucking secret, if Kiara could say so herself, though it wasn’t really her fault — JJ was the one who kissed her first. And sure, maybe she did suggest that they keep it going, and maybe she did leave her window slightly ajar every night for the boy to climb into, _but he had kissed her first_. Pulled her into a walk-in closet at a Kook party he had crashed when they were fifteen, wrapped an arm around her waist, put his hand on her neck and kissed her senseless until her legs were all wobbly. 

So on days like this, when they would all be out on the boat catching seaweed, at the Boneyard drinking so much beer their brains got dizzy, at the beach in Nags Head with their boards under their arms or chilling in the hammocks at the Chateau smoking a joint, Kiara knew what it meant when JJ gave her that look from across the room. _Later,_ he was saying. _Wait for me_ , he’d ask. 

JJ had started getting bold over the past half a year. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even wait for John B to have closed his bedroom’s door all the way before pulling Kiara into the kitchen and kissing her neck as the small of her back was pressed against the counter, and other times, he’d sneak Kiara into one of the many rooms at the Cameron’s while the Pogues played poker on the dinner table. 

Kiara did notice his sudden change in behaviour had started after Sarah, who had admittedly smoked one too many joints on a Sunday afternoon, pointed straight at Kiara when she said ‘ _College is going to be perfect for you. Everything before that is just going to look like a blur, even us_.’ JJ pulled her body up and over his shoulders only fifteen minutes later, when all the others were busy watching videos of puppies on YouTube, took her towards the Twinkie parked by the water and helped her get rid of her shorts and bikini bottoms in the backseat. 

She was almost done packing now. Sure, her move was still over a month and a half away, but her parents were planners like that, and Anna especially seemed to be quite content by the sight of three oversized bags piled up in Kiara’s room by the window. JJ tripped on them as he came in later that afternoon, fell down on the wooden floor with a loud thud.

‘’Smooth,’’ Kiara stretched out her arm and helped him up. ‘’You’re lucky my parents aren’t downstairs.’’

In three years, JJ had only been caught sneaking into the Carrera’s less than a handful of times, but the pair had, every single time, managed to play it off as JJ having forgotten something of his with Kiara and was innocently coming to pick it up. She kept a drawer filled with his stuff for this purpose only — and not because she sometimes enjoyed sleeping wrapped up in his shirts and tying her hair up with his bandana while she was doing the dishes. That had decidedly _nothing_ to do with it. 

‘’And when will they be back?’’ JJ asked, taking off his long sleeved shirt and throwing it on the bag pile, as if in an attempt to hide them. 

‘’Soon,’’ Kiara said, following JJ’s lead and removing every piece of clothing from her upper body as well. ‘’But not too soon.’’

He had seen her naked dozens of times — hundreds, Kiara even dared say. But every time she took off her shit and bikini top, pushed her hair over her shoulder in an unconscious effort to let him see more, let him see _everything_ , it seemed like the first time. He leaned forward, face flushed, mouth slightly open and those brilliantly blue eyes sparkling with something Kiara liked to think was pure, raw and sincere _awe_. 

‘’So enough time for me to get you to scream my name, then?’’ He smiled, that boyish, cheeky grin that made Kiara want to slap his shoulder and to kiss him until his lips bled.

‘’I don’t know,’’ it was one of the warmest days of early July, and Kiara hoped she could blame the deep pink painting her cheeks on that. ‘’You tell me.’’

Kiara was challenging him, and she knew that would’ve been more than enough to rile him up. He was that type of person, not even JJ himself would deny it — dare him to do something, and _he will_. 

Every piece of clothing left could be found scattered around the bag pile on the floor pretty soon after that. JJ traced her collaborne with his fingers, kissing along it, taking his time. His mouth found the outer edge of her breast, slowly working his tongue’s way around to the middle of her chest. 

When he started to nip and suck every bit of soft skin he could reach, Kiara knew it was his intention to leave a mark. He littered hickies all over, spots in dark shades of red and purple that would sure be a hassle to cover up without her having to sweat her ass off in an oversized turtleneck sweater. Still, Kiara couldn’t bring herself to ask him to stop, or to even care at all — it felt a lot like JJ saying _you’re mine_ , and Kiara responding _I am. Through and through_.

He cupped her breasts in his hands. The one he wasn’t sucking and biting on, stopping only every once in a while to lightly blow on the area, he was entertaining with his fingers, pinching and pulling on her nipples with his thumb and forefinger. The moment Kiara let her back arch and his name escape her lips in a loud moan, she knew she was a goner.

JJ smirked against her soft skin. ‘’That was fast.’’

‘’Shut up,’’ Kiara said lightheartedly with a giggle, aware of the fact she would most definitely have his name rolling off her tongue at least a few more times that day. 

He looked directly into her eyes, as if he could see her bones and her soul and everything in between, every vein, every artery, every tendon. ‘’Make me.’’

Kiara was also that type of person. Not always, but sometimes. Sometimes, dared her do something, and _she would_. 

She placed her hands against his cheeks, kept a tight grip as she tugged him forward, and captured his swollen red lips between her teeth. He tasted like the cold beer they always drank in the summer and the coconut chapstick Kiara made him use whenever she noticed his lips were chapped, intoxicating because it was simply _oh so JJ_ and Kiara knew she could never find something like it in any other lips. 

His hands ran up and down on her hip bones for a moment before he pushed her back, letting her fall on the queen size bed with a soft thud. When he stared down at her, she felt _seen_ , as if the boy was staring at his whole world underneath him. In return, she flashed him a bright smile, the type of smile you save for something important — for someone important.

Kiara squeezed her thighs together in expectation for only a moment before JJ was spreading them apart, his grip tightened, and the cold of his metal rings against her warm skin sent shivers down her spine. When he caught sight of her undeniable wetness, he groaned — only went silent again by pressing his lips to her neck, placing soft, velvety kisses that much contradicted the way in which his hand travelled down her body and his thumb brushed against her throbbing clit. He was all too much and not enough at the same time, giving only to take back.

Kiara put her tongue to good use and went from his jaw to his earlobe, hard and fast, making sure to bite and suck just enough to urge him on. JJ slipped a finger inside of her without any obstruction, her own wetness being more than enough. 

‘’Good?’’ He asked. Kiara only nodded, her breath hitched, and he took that as a sign to add his middle finger. Kiara cried out, unable to swallow her own moans, and JJ smiled, a bit too pleased with himself. ‘’I’ll take that as a yes.’’

The girl didn’t have the resilience to be annoyed at JJ’s self-assurance, two of his long, ring-clad fingers pumping in and out of her as his thumb drew figure eights on her clit. She knew him — he wasn’t about to let her come right then, not so easily, and especially not after last time, when she figured it’d be a fun idea to edge him and get his cock out of her mouth just a second before he was about to spill his load. As soon as her legs clamped shut around his hand in anticipation for a soon-arriving orgasm, his fingers were being removed, leaving Kiara with a dreadful sense of emptiness. 

She didn’t have time to complain, though. JJ licked his fingers clean and released them with a loud pop before grabbing one of the condoms from Kiara’s stash, safely kept on her bedside table under some old-school magazines she knew her mother wouldn’t be interested in. He entered her with one swift movement and she sucked in her breath sharply, unable to ignore the way his quiet moans and throaty groans as her walls adjusted around him turned her on even more. 

Kiara pulled him closer in a desperate attempt to have his chest against hers and their heartbeats synchronized. She thought back to the first time they had done something like this, all those months ago. ‘ _Tell me if it hurts, ok?_ ’, he had asked, eyes filled with worry. Part of her wanted it to hurt. It never did, not with him. 

Kiara’s mouth fell agape once he quickened his pace, grasping his bicep to keep herself steady. He watched her with half-open eyes, and used his thumb to lift her chin. ‘’Kie?’’

She propped herself up with her elbows, the tip of her nose brushing his. ‘’Yeah?’’

His hand travelled across her body, the cool metal of his many rings setting her skin ablaze. ‘’Do you like me?’’ JJ asked, and Kiara giggled at first, thinking he had meant the question as a joke. His wide eyes and shallow breathing said otherwise.

 _Would I have let you fuck me every other night for three years if I didn’t?_ , Kiara almost blurted out, but then she figured JJ probably slept with at least a handful of girls who didn’t particularly like him, and he didn’t particularly like either. 

They followed the rule of never telling the other about their individual conquests in bed, but she wasn’t dumb, and she wasn’t blind, and much less was she deaf. Kiara heard the stories told inside bathroom stalls at Kildare High, she saw the girls clinging on to JJ’s shoulders as he led them towards the Chateau. She knew he had other girls, just as he knew she had other guys — but it didn’t matter, because JJ would never belong to someone more than he belonged to Kiara. She was certain of it.

She was _pretty_ certain of it.

‘’Of course I like you,’’ she said, poking his nose only because she knew he thought that was a funny gesture, especially when they were like this. ‘’I’ve told you that, haven’t I?’’

‘’No,’’ his fingers hovered over the fresh hickies scattered along her neck and upper chest. ‘’Not really.’’

Kiara was sure she had. She must have, right? But put on the stop, she couldn’t quite remember one specific moment — she had always been one to show, not tell, but she also figured it couldn’t hurt to let it be known with words every once in a while.

‘’Oh,’’ she gasped when he moved inside her involuntarily, as if bracing himself for whatever she was about to say. ‘’Well, I do. I like you the most.’’

He kissed her flushed cheek, the tip of her nose, her upper lip. ‘’As a friend?’’

‘’That too.’’

JJ pounded his hips into her when she was least expecting, a surprised gasp escaping her glossy lips. His fingers gripped her waist just as Kiara’s hands found their way to his back, tracing random shapes with her nails that would sure leave a mark. _A mark for a mark_ , she figured was only fair. _You make me yours, as long as I can make you mine_.

He kissed her sloppily, all tongue and teeth, and moaned into her mouth whenever she used her hips to meet his thrusts halfway. So she kept doing it, again and again, just to keep listening to his throaty moans and shallow breaths against her collarbone, until they reached a fast paced rhythm that left Kiara’s body trembling.

JJ placed his hands on her thighs to stop them from shaking, and smirked when he felt the goosebumps that had formed all over her skin. When he placed his lips to hers again it was with urgency, harder, as if not doing so caused him nothing but immense agony. 

‘’JJ?’’ Kiara asked as her arm went around his neck, her fingers tangled in the messy hair at his nape. ‘’Do _you_ like me?’’

And Kiara couldn’t deny she felt awfully juvenile asking him so, but she also figured it was worth it when he broke the kiss to stare deep into her brown eyes and say, ‘’Course,’’ he traced a finger along her jaw, ‘’The most. Always.’’

JJ soon exchanged his finger on her jaw for his mouth, nipping and leaving even more bruises along her neck. His thrusts grew more erratic, loud groans escaping his lips, and Kiara, close to reaching her own high, assisted his movements, rocking harder and faster, circling her hips and moaning his name just the way she knew he liked. 

‘’Fuck, I’m going to miss—’’ he moaned nearly out of breath, and for a moment Kiara thought he’d say _you, I’m going to miss you_. ‘’—this. I’m going to miss this so fuckin’ much, Kiara.’’

It felt as if he had pulled a handgun and shot her in the chest. She ignored it, though — pushed the feeling aside, locked it somewhere deep, hid it in the space between her ribcage and her heart. She let herself be engulfed by the overwhelming feeling of his cock hard and pulsating inside of her, and how much she would miss this, and him as well. _Him, the most_

His skin slammed against hers, the only sound apart from their desperate moans and throaty _fucks_ that filled the room. Kiara felt the pit of her stomach tighten and herself clench around him, and as he reached a hand down, right in between their connected bodies to rub circles where she needed him most, her legs immediately went up in the air, toes curled and eyes rolled back into her head.

When she came, she was sad. Which does sound weird in retrospect, but perhaps she could sense that that would be the last time, in a really long time, that he would touch her like that, that she would feel his skin, his warmth, his pulsating veins inside of her. So Kiara didn’t let him go for a while. Pulled him closer, her arms tight around his shoulders and her legs holding on to his hips — made them stand still, if only for a second longer, as her fingertips traced the few tiny dark spots that coloured part of his clavicle like specks of paint. 

JJ, on the other hand, came hard and with an almost animalistic grunt as he screamed her name — her _name_ , not her nickname, because JJ and Kiara and JJ and Kie were two very different duos. She smiled when she noticed his brows knitted together in concentration, as if fucking her was something that needed his uttermost attention.

He bit hard onto her neck when he noticed his whimpers were loud enough to alert a whole neighbourhood. His thumb didn’t stop rubbing soft circles on her clit as he rode out his high, not until she felt so sensitive she finally untightened her grip on him and let JJ roll off of her. 

His muscles were relaxed, face all flushed and sweaty, blond hair spiking up in every direction. With the sight, Kiara couldn’t help but lay her head on his chest, and he welcomed her into an embrace — kissed her on the forehead, like he always did after they were done, _every single time_ , and played with her hair for so long the light coming from the window ceased and it was suddenly dark. 

When JJ let his eyes fall on the pile of half-packed bags in the corner for a minute too long, Kiara asked, with an undeniable hopefulness in her voice, ‘’Are you going to visit me in Charleston?’’

‘’I dunno,’’ his thumb caressed her jaw, right where he had left a mark. ‘’Bet you’d pretend not to know me.’’

The smile on JJ’s face looked an awful lot like the one he’d have whenever he was questioned about the purple bruises that covered his chest and his stomach. Pained, apprehensive and calculated as if he only had two options — cry until there were no tears left or laugh even though nothing about it was funny at all.

‘’I would never pretend not to know you,’’ Kiara said. She meant it. ‘’You’re kind of my favourite person,’’ and only because there was a hint of something in his eyes that she wasn’t quite ready to confront, she added with a playful chuckle, ‘’Don’t tell the others, Sarah’s going to be jealous.’’

She figured plenty could change once she went away to college, herself included — this one magazine her mother bought and Kiara would never admit to reading once said people are nothing but a collection of the people they’ve met, the places they’ve visited and the things they’ve been through, good and bad. Kiara knew she would change, but the way she felt about the Pogues and JJ never would — they would forever and always be her people, JJ especially.

‘’You know, speaking of the others. Earlier today, with the Pogues,’’ Kiara said, drawing her lip in between her teeth. ‘’I thought you were going to tell them. About me, I mean. Us.’’

‘’And we couldn’t have that, could we?’’ JJ asked. There was a hint of snark in his voice, even though he still had his cheek against the side of her head and his fingers kept on pulling out tiny knots out of her hair. ‘’I mean, what a fucking disaster that would’ve been, huh?’’

Kiara propped herself up on one elbow. ‘’What the hell is that supposed to mean?’’

‘’Nothing,’’ he inhaled sharply, and only exhaled when his body found the strength to get up and off the bed. ‘’Just sayin’ that I really hope our friends don’t ever find out that you’ve been letting me fuck you all this time.’’

‘’What’s got your panties in a twist?’’ Kiara hissed. She covered her naked body with the silky white sheet that had been thrown to the floor, suddenly feeling too exposed. 

JJ seemed to feel the same way, picking up his scattered pieces of clothing off the ground. He stared at the bag pile stone-faced, lips that had kissed Kiara softly just a few moments before, now pressed tight. Threw the used condom in the garbage can unceremoniously, and Kiara made a mental note to take out the trash later that night before her dad could.

‘’Don’t you ever get tired?,’’ JJ sighed, zipping up his signature cargo shorts. ‘’I mean, the sneaking around was kind of hot for a few weeks, Kiara, but it got old real fuckin’ fast.’’

Kiara pulled her knees up to her chin, puzzled. It had been his idea to not tell the other Pogues about their little arrangement. Right? Well, she was pretty sure it had been, though there was never an official conversation between the two on the matter, it had always felt like a sort of silent agreement that _he had started_. He was the one who left open mouthed kissed on her jaw and hummed against her neck, ‘ _The others will be so mad about this_.’ He said it first, not her. 

And perhaps neither of them figured whatever it was they had going on would last for that long, because suddenly six months had gone by, and a year, and then two, so of course Kiara casually mentioned once, right after they had nearly been caught by Sarah and John B at the Chateau, that ‘ _If they find out we’ve been macking this whole time, they’re going to be pissed_.’ But he agreed, he did. 

‘’Well, excuse me,’’ Kiara snapped back, wild gesturing along every single poisoned word. ‘’Really, excuse me JJ, if I didn’t realise having someone to fuck and suck your dick all the time had gotten _so old_.’’

He stopped in his tracks, blue eyes softening for a moment. ‘’That’s not what I meant and you know it.’’

She knew he didn’t. She hoped he knew she didn’t mean it like that either, as if for the past three years they had been nothing but fuck buddies — because sure, they did that, and it was good, _it was great_ , but there would be the times when he’d climb up her window for an entirely non-sexual evening of watching _The Office_ on Netflix and eating caramel popcorn, and days when the others would be busy with their own shit so Kiara would drive JJ all the way to the beach in Nags Head for them to surf, eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and get high, toes in the sand. 

So they fucked, yeah. But he also picked up seashells on the beach with cool shapes and pretty colors to give them to her later, and she kept them, every single one of them. Whenever Kiara was sick, he would stay with her the whole time, hold her hair up in a makeshift ponytail as she vomited, kiss her closed eyelids and her knuckles because she insisted that _exchanging saliva with her while she was sick would be irresponsible_. And every night she was supposed to work a late shift at The Wreck, she would text him, and he would be outside waiting for her, never one second late, a blunt dangling from his lips. 

They fucked, sure. But he also meant a lot more to her than that, and she hoped he knew so even though she couldn’t find the courage to tell him herself. 

‘’Believe it or not, JJ,’’ Kiara stood up from the bed, picked up a dirty shirt off the floor that JJ had left there the night before. The material felt harsh against her skin. ‘’I actually find it very hard to know what you mean most of the time.’’

JJ did have a way to go from a good mood, laughing around and telling jokes left and right to a bad mood, telling the others to get out of his way and locking himself in a room. But not with Kiara, no, never with her. 

‘’Can we just drop it?’’ JJ chuckled dryly, lifted his hands in surrender. ‘’Seriously, I don’t want to fight with you, you know it gets my head fuckin’ pounding and shit.’’ 

Kiara pulled her hair up into a bun, an uncomfortable warmth having creeped up her neck. ‘’Fine, sorry,’’ she said, letting her hands fall and slap loudly against the side of her bare thighs. ‘’I don’t even know what we’re fighting about.’’

He took a step closer towards her, shifted weight from one foot to the other. ‘’We’re not fighting.’’ He said, and though from the way he bit the inside of his cheek proved his statement to be a lie, Kiara didn’t feel like pushing.

So, instead, she allowed JJ to pull her to him. Rest her head on his chest, heard the loud hammering of his heart, nearly as loud as her own. 

‘’Oh, fuck, almost forgot,’’ he said, and reached into his cargo shorts’ back pocket. ‘’For you.’’

He held a seashell in his hands — delicate and small, about the size of his pinky. It was mostly white, but with specks of navy blue and turquoise all around. The shape was also quite different from everything else Kiara had seen, pointed at one end while two equal curves met at the top, like a heart. She took it into her own hands with a soft smile.

‘’See? Told you we ain’t fighting’,’’ he smirked, but his words fell shaky and clipped, as if he couldn’t believe himself. ‘’I’ll see you later. Text me if your car is still making that weird sound, yeah?.’’ JJ kissed her on the forehead once again. This time, for a reason Kiara could not yet explain, it felt like the end of something. 

She watched him crawl down her window. She was supposed to see him at a kegger the following night, the one the Pogues had been planning for weeks to celebrate graduating high school, but there was a sudden and relentless dread in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t quite shake. 

Kiara waited for his text. The ‘ _yo, when can I pick you up?_ ’ or the ‘ _drop by earlier and smoke a blunt before it starts?_ ’ that he would usually send hours before a kegger, every time since sophomore year, but it never came. She tried calling him, but his phone was turned off — called three times, but figured the fourth one would be overkill and gave up. So she called Sarah instead, and the blonde picked up on the second ring.

Not even fifteen minutes later, Sarah and John B had pulled up to Kiara’s house, helped her into the Twinkie. Didn’t dare ask them about JJ’s whereabouts, but for some reason, they did so anyway. ‘ _He went to help Pope set up the keg_ ’, Sarah said, her hand on John B’s bouncing knee. ‘ _Yeah, it was heavier than normal today_ ’, the brunette added, but only after Sarah pinched his thigh.

Kiara had a few drinks during the ride — nothing too strong, only cheap beers and wine coolers from the one local store known for selling to minors. She wished she had had more, though. She wished she was really fucking drunk, because maybe then it wouldn’t have hurt as much when she made her way across the Boneyard looking for a mop of messy, blond hair only to find him busy, more than entertained. His arms around a girl’s waist. Her hand on his neck, tracing a hickey Kiara had marked him with. His lips on hers, stopping only to smile and giggle every once in a while.

It hurt, no way around it. Because yeah, she knew he’d occasionally hook up with other girls, but not right to her face, not like this. Not at one of _their_ keggers. Not when he could be with her instead, making the best out of her last weeks in the Outer Banks. And it hurt the most when he took the girl by the hand and led her towards the group, introducing her as his date. 

Kiara couldn’t even hear the girl’s name. Her heart was rapping against her ribs, ringing in her ears, so loud every other sound turned into nothing but a mumbled echo from miles away. So she drank — more beer at first, but then vodka, and at last a dark brown mix of too many things she couldn’t identify. She drank until she had a hard time judging where her feet should go and even standing still, the world kept spinning around her. 

‘’Kie,’’ Sarah had an arm on her shoulder protectively, so she must have been close, not that Kiara could tell. Everything and everyone seemed to be two thousand miles away. ‘’Let me take you home, yeah?’’

Kiara pulled her arm from the blonde’s grip, twisted it left and right. ‘’No, I’m not ready to go,’’ she said, ‘’This is our graduation party, Sarah. I’m not leaving.’’

Pope, who had been silently watching the exchange, took a step closer, mumbled Kiara’s name a few times to try to get her attention. 

‘’No, Pope,’’ Kiara interrupted the boy before he could get another word out. ‘’I said I’m not fucking leaving right now, so back off.’’

Kiara fought against the bile traveling up her throat, threatening to spill at any second. She wanted to walk back to the Chateau and lay on the floor, puke her guts out until there was nothing left inside of her. But she walked towards JJ and the girl instead, ignored Sarah’s desperate _‘Kie, don’t_ ’, held her head high and her chin up even though she was pretty sure she had never looked worse, pale face and bottom lip twitching.

‘’Why did you bring this girl?’’ Kiara asked point-blank, before JJ had even had the chance to turn around all the way and face her. The girl stared daggers at her, arms crossed tightly against her chest. ‘’No, I mean, no offense to you, whoever the fuck you are, I’m sure you’re great and your shirt is really cute, but _what the fuck_ , JJ?’’

‘’Jesus, Kiara. I think you’ve had too much to drink,’’ she could see the confusion in JJ’s face. He chuckled, trying to play it off, but gently pushed the other girl behind him and out of Kiara’s view nonetheless. ‘’Come on, I’ll take you home. Your mom’s going to be pissed.’’

He reached for her arm, but she jerked it away from his grip, took a step back blindly. ‘’ _I’m_ pissed,’’ she said breathless, a little desperate, ‘’ _I’m_ pissed. Do you even care?’’ and she was crying. Fuck, great. _Of course she had to start crying_. ‘’Why don’t you care?’’

JJ tried to get closer to her, his date long forgotten somewhere in the sand behind them. Kiara didn’t let him — took another step backwards, bumped into a guy who had been carrying an overfilled drink in his hands. Some of it spilled in her hair, got the tiny braids all sticky, but Kiara couldn’t bring herself to dwell on it.

‘’I do care.’’ He kicked dust in the sand, and clearly had an easier time staring down at his combat boots than straight at the girl in front of him.

‘’You have a shitty way of showing it.’’ Kiara scoffed, hands gripping onto the hem of her oversized shirt just to have something to do.

JJ shook his head, rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms until they were red and puffy. ‘’What do you want me to say, Kie?’’ he drew up a shallow breath. ‘’That I’m going to miss you? Of course I’m going to fuckin’ miss you, I miss you all the time, even now. I don’t have to tell you that, you should know.’’

And maybe she did. Maybe she did know the whole time, but still wanted to hear the words come out of his mouth anyway. 

‘’Then what the fuck are you doing?’’ Kiara kept on pushing, even though it felt awfully juvenile and more than embarrassing, even though she was quite aware all of their friends were watching the whole thing go down, even though she knew whatever he said was going to hurt.

JJ hooked both thumbs in his pockets. ‘’You’re hammered,’’ he said. Bit the inside of his cheek so hard Kiara wondered whether he could taste blood. ‘’I don’t want to do this shit right now.’’

‘’No, seriously, tell me,’’ she pushed again. Her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, she wanted to push and push until he gave her something, _anything_. ‘’If you’re going to miss me, then what the fuck are you doing?’’

‘’For fuck’s sake, Kiara,’’ JJ shouted, his expression hardened. ‘’It’s not fuckin’ real if we’re the only two people who know about it,’’ his fists were balled at his sides, and he was the one to take a step back this time, put as much distance as possible between the two. ‘’We’re not fuckin’ real, ok?’’

Kiara felt her eyes fill with tears, and closed them in an attempt to stop them from falling down her cheeks. She kept them closed the whole time — only could tell he had left from the coldness that invaded her body, from the empty hole in her chest that insisted on opening whenever he was away. _This time he’s going away for good_ , she thought. And the hole only got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until it swallowed her and she could taste nothing but salt and metal.

Sarah offered to drive her home again — put her arms around Kiara’s shoulders, helped her maintain balance as they walked towards the van. Kiara threw up as soon as her feet left the sand, let her knees hit the pavement. 

She felt utterly pathetic heaved on all fours, stomach clenched in pain and a sour taste in her mouth that felt like a hellish brew of hard liquor and bile. Her reflection on the Twinkie’s windscreen proved her right, the sight of a girl with mascara running in streaks down her face and mucus hanging from her nose.

‘’Here,’’ Sarah offered the girl a piece of gum, the strawberry sugar-free kind she always had somewhere in her bag. ‘’And don’t even try to say no. I know you always say it ends up as landfill waste or whatever, but your breath smells like shit.’’

Kiara wiped the rest of the bile away from the curve of her chapped lips with the palm of her hand, accepted the gum wholeheartedly and felt it relax her aching stomach as she settled back on the passenger’s seat. 

Every other minute, Sarah would side-eye her worriedly, her knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel. ‘’Sarah,’’ Kiara called, hoping to not see her reflection again before she had a chance to wash up. ‘’I love you, but you can stop staring at me like I’m going to choke on my own vomit any second.’’

‘’Right, right,’’ the blonde tilted her head to the side. ‘’Cool, sorry.’’

Kiara figured nothing else could be as embarrassing as the intimate argument she had just had in front of all her closest friends and classmates, and decided that out of all the Pogues, Sarah would be the one less likely to make fun of her for it. 

‘’Did you see what happened?’’ Kiara asked, though the answer was obvious. ‘’Did you—,’’ she stuttered, and then coughed dryly in a failed attempt to conceal it. ‘’Did you hear it?’’

Sarah shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘’A bit, yeah, I did.’’

‘’Oh, I was just—,’’ Kiara could, all of a sudden, feel the taste of bile coming back up her throat. ‘’I mean, we were just—’’

‘’You don’t have to explain it to me, Kie,’’ Sarah interrupted, and Kiara was grateful she put her out of her misery. ‘’We all figured whatever this thing was that you and JJ had going on, it’d blow up at some point. For good or bad.’’

Sarah saw the shock register on Kiara’s face, brown eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar, before the girl could even have the chance to hide it.

‘’You knew?’’ She asked blankly.

The sweat that dripped down Kiara’s back had soaked her shirt, getting it stuck to her skin. She tried to move her arms to put her hair up in a bun, let the wind coming from the window cool the back of her neck, but they wouldn’t bulge. 

‘’The walls at the Chateau are pretty thin,’’ Sarah giggled, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘’Besides, JJ has a loud mouth when he’s drunk. You too, apparently, but I guess that’s a newfound skill.’’

Three years. Over a thousand days of longing stares on the HMS Pogues and stolen kisses outside The Wreck by the badly-lit parking lot. All the times JJ got scrapes all over his body from climbing up and down her window every other night, all the times Kiara would wake up to find new bumps on her head from hiding underneath his bed at the Chateau whenever they heard footsteps outside at the door. 

‘’And you weren’t angry?’’ Kiara asked.

Sarah inhaled — not like she had to think about it, but more like she wanted Kiara to have time to brace herself. ‘’Nope,’’ she said finally, ‘’I mean, it’s not really any of my business, is it? I don’t care who you’re screwing, Kie,’’ Sarah chuckled, but bit on her bottom lip to stop it from coming a full on laugh. ‘’As long as it’s not my boyfriend, course.’’

Kiara couldn’t tell anymore whether she was chewing the strawberry gum or the inside of her cheek, feeling the taste of blood on her tongue. ‘’The boys?’’

‘’Oh, you know them,’’ Sarah tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, ‘’Dramatic little shits at first, but I made sure they knew it wasn’t any of their business either.’’

Kiara blinked away the new tears that flooded her eyes — tears for the lost time, tears for the things left unsaid, tears for her boy who was never really her boy for reasons that suddenly felt more than futile. 

She made a decision right then, as soon as Sarah pulled up to her driveway. When the blonde stopped the van, turned the key to the left, Kiara’s mind had already been made up — no backtracking, no second thought, because things were fucked and she was fucked and she had to go. She would go anyway, right then or in a month, and figured it would be better to just rip off the band-aid, leave before she had to face the others the next morning and watch as their faces scrunched up in pity. 

‘’Do you think we can make it to the ferry before midnight?’’ Kiara said deadpan, as if dropping a bomb and patiently waiting for it to blow up.

Sarah put her palm on Kiara’s arm, drew random shapes. ‘’Kie—’’

‘’No, don’t,’’ Kiara swallowed hard, something that felt a lot like warm beer and cheap wine. ‘’Don’t say anything, just drive me, please?’’

The blonde collapsed onto the seat, forgetting all about her perfect posture. There was no changing Kiara’s mind, and she knew so. 

‘’I’ll just get another ride if you don’t.’’ Kiara added, just to put the final nail in the coffin.

Sarah nodded with a pained smile and a shrug, something that clearly said _I don’t agree with this, but I’ll do it for you_ , which really, was all Kiara could have hoped to get from her best friend.

For the first time, the pile of nearly-all-packed bags by a corner in Kiara’s room felt like a blessing. She would call her parents in the morning, as soon as she had already hopped on a bus to Charleston. They would understand, she figured — over sentimental farewells weren’t their cup of tea, anyway. 

Her phone vibrated in her back pocket, again, and again, and again. She took it in her hands after she closed the Twinkie’s door with a loud thud, narrowed her brown eyes to get used to the brightness.

Four missed calls from JJ. One voicemail. 

She took her phone to her ear, swallowed hard. JJ had never once left her a voicemail — he was a texter, through and through. 

Kiara raised the volume all the way up, afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear him with the loud beat of her heart against her ribcage. ‘’Kie,’’ he started, let out a harsh sigh before correcting himself. ‘‘ _Kiara_. Are you— are you home? I’m coming over, ok? But my bike isn’t fuckin’ starting so I’m gonna walk, I’m walking right now, I’ll be there in— fuck, I don’t know how long, but it’ll be fast, I’m walking fast.’’

She could make sense of JJ’s heavy, rapid steps, and his breathing just as loud, just as high-speed. ’’Fuck, Kie, I—,’’ there was a loud honk, and JJ’s mumbled voice telling someone to go fuck themselves. ‘‘You know I meant it, right? That I’ll miss you. I will. And I know JB will still be here, so I won’t be alone, and that it’s not like you’re going to Europe or some shit, it’s just an eight hour drive, right? I mean, you said eight hours, but I drive fast, so maybe seven. Seven hours. I guess it’s not a lot, but hey, it’s been— it’s been, like— fuckin’ with my head a little, I think.’’

Kiara walked into her room, closed the door softly so as to not wake her sleeping parents. The heart-shaped seashell JJ had given her still stood on her night stand, as mockingly as an inanimate object could. She let her fingers trace its smooth, soft curves, keeping herself grounded as JJ took several shaky breaths. 

‘‘ _Kiara_ ,’’ his voice cracked like it pained him to even have her name on his tongue. ‘‘I don’t really know what to say. It’s fucked, everything’s fucked, I know. But I—’’, he paused. Kiara’s fingers covered her mouth to stop the sob that threatened to escape. ‘’—I really love you, Kie. I’m sorry.’’

And though it took everything in her to do so, Kiara put her phone back in her pocket, picked up the bags that seemed the easiest to carry all by herself and walked out the door. 


	2. a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them

Kiara kept the seashell. Last time she saw it, it was safely stored around her room somewhere — it looked like Anna hadn’t left the space as untouched as Kiara first thought, since she had been going through drawers for the past half hour and still couldn’t find it.

And why Kiara wanted to find it so desperately, she couldn’t tell. It was that kind of feeling that starts in the pit of your stomach and echoes around your body, a voice in your head that screams so loudly, it breaks your ribcage. 

She jumped down the stairs and ran towards the kitchen. The scent of garam masala, ginger and coriander filled the room as Mike stirred marinated chicken pieces into his famous Carrera sauce in a heavy skillet, brows furrowed in utter concentration. Kiara used to joke that her dad reached nirvana whenever he was cooking, and Anna seemed to agree, sitting on a bar stool at a safe distance, silently watching her husband as he focused on the perfectioning of his basmati rice.

‘’Hey, mom,’’ Kiara’s waist hit the pointy corner of the marble kitchen island, and she winced. 

Anna eyed her disapprovingly. ‘’Careful, Kiara,’’ she said, ‘’You know I don’t like it when you run inside the house, it’s an accident waiting to happen.’’

Kiara held her tongue to stop herself from biting back. She had learned over the years that, with her mom, there was a time and place for everything — if you needed her help, that was undoubtedly _not_ the right time to lash out over something minor. 

So, liking to think she was a mostly functioning adult who could control herself and not pick a frivolous fight with her mother after being home for less than an hour, she instead went straight to the point, and asked, ‘’Have you seen my jewelry box? I’ve looked for it everywhere in my room, and I can’t find it.’’

Anna tilted her head. ‘’What jewelry box?’’

‘’ _Mom_ ,’’ Kiara rolled her eyes, and instantly felt too juvenile doing so. Played it off by blinking hard, as if her eyelashes had been bothering her. ‘’The one Nana gave me when I got my first period, remember? And she was all like, ‘ _Kiara, you’re a woman now, and every woman should have her own jewelry box'._ ’’

Anna giggled, drummed her fingers on the marble countertops following the rhythm of her laugh. ‘’Oh, that sure sounds like your Nana,’’ she said, and even Mike, who had been indifferent to the conversation thus far, chuckled. 

‘’Well,’’ Kiara hissed. ‘’Have you seen it? I’m pretty sure I left it in my wardrobe last time I was here.’’

‘’It was there, and then you asked me to get rid of it,’’ Anna crossed her arms, and seemingly taking the cue from Kiara’s dumbfounded expression, continued, ‘’You texted me on your birthday last year, at God-knows-when in the morning, and told me to, and I quote, _take it to the yard and light it on fire_.’’

Oh. _Oh_. Kiara couldn’t remember using those exact words, but what she did remember clearly was a slight breakdown she had five minutes after midnight, when it became obvious that that would be the first year since she had met JJ Maybank that he wouldn’t be the first person to call wishing her a happy birthday. Even the year before that, when they were already broken up, he had _still_ called her at 11:59 at night, and sure, maybe the conversation had been a little awkward, but it felt good to hear his voice — it felt good to know that, no matter what happened, or where they were, he would still call her that same day every year, a minute before midnight. Until he didn’t. 

So Kiara went to a bar with her friends, drank every Whiskey Sour she was offered and texted her mom. She had some of his clothes back home (wore them to sleep every once in a while), had the seashells he’d religiously give her still in her old room in the Outer Banks, and had thorns puncturing her heart that made her bleed out, each of them tagged _JJ Maybank_. She couldn’t stop herself from internally bleeding until there was nothing left, but she _could_ get rid of all his other shit.

Yet, she didn’t want to do it. Not really. It somehow felt all too final to never again have a piece of him to hold on to, as small as it was, as insignificant — it was still something, and a quiet voice in her head told her something was better than nothing.

‘’But you didn’t,’’ Kiara said, and it felt more like a prayer than a question. ‘’Did you?’’

Anna seemed almost offended by the insinuation. ‘’Of course not,’’ she scoffed, ‘’I’m not a barbarian. It is a _family heirloom_ , Kiara.’’

Kiara heaved a sigh of relief. For the past year, Anna had been keeping the object safely inside her own locked wardrobe, surrounded by handbags and silky scarves. The burl wood was as shiny as ever, but the white velvet inside that used to smell like Kiara’s favorite lavender and rosemary incense now unmistakably smelled like Anna Carrera herself, a sweet mixture of expensive perfume and the fresh mint from her face cream. 

Everything else seemed to be in place, though, so props to her mother. Not one seashell had been taken out — not the large, corkscrew shaped orange one JJ gave her when they were thirteen like it was nothing, just because he thought she had been unusually down, and not the white and brown striped, involute shell JJ only picked up because he said it looked like a snail, and he knew Gary from SpongeBob was one of Kiara’s favorite cartoon characters. Not the heart-shaped one either — that one stood on top of all the others, reigning in all its glory. 

Kiara put it in her back pocket as if carrying a lucky charm. She had it hanging from her keychain for two years after leaving the Outer Banks for the first time, and perhaps that’s why the action didn’t feel as extreme — carrying the heart he gave her. _He gave her_ willingly, and therefore it was hers to hold on to as she pleased, just like she always had. 

  
  
• • • **5 years before** • • •

  
  
  


She was holding the keychain in her hands when she first saw him. Her fingers traced the rough ridges, a small gesture she had acquired the habit of doing almost involuntarily over the past two years.

And though Kiara was, as usual, surrounded by other people, every voice faded, the bodies of her new friends all meshed together in the background and turned into one big blob she didn’t give a fuck about. _Because JJ was there_. Her boy was there, unmistakably, all spiked up blond hair and baby blue eyes, wearing the same black combat boots and cut-off tee he always wore, as if he had stopped in time the day after she left. 

Maybe he had.

‘’Kiara Carrera,’’ he hollered, hands cupped around his mouth so he could grab the attention of the dark haired girl up the stairs of Riggleman Hall. _As if she hadn’t spotted him as soon as he stepped foot on the grass_. ‘’Is that really you, or is the party brownie I just had hittin’ sooner than I thought it would?’’

She had, plenty of times, usually late at night whenever she couldn’t fall asleep, wondered how it would feel like to see JJ again after so long. Twenty-five months, to be exact — because the few times Kiara visited the Outer Banks for Thanksgiving, Christmas and her mother’s birthday, JJ was _coincidentally_ away doing God knows what in Middletown, and when the whole group was supposed to meet in California to surprise Pope for his 20th birthday in January, JJ had stayed in the Banks for a definitely-not-good-enough reason. 

Last time Kiara saw him she had dark mascara dripping down her face and snot hanging off her nose. ‘ _How bad did I look?’_ , she had asked Sarah over the phone a few days after she arrived in Charleston, to which Sarah simply said, ‘ _Bad. You don’t want the details_.’ But Kiara didn’t need any details, not really — the image had been stuck in her mind, still was, even after all this time. 

_‘We’re not fuckin’ real’_ , he said then, and she cried because she used to think he was the realest thing in her life. 

_‘I really love you, Kie’_ , he also said, and she just up and left because the alternative was too soul-baring.

He went up the stairs as she went down, meeting in the middle. Air stalled in Kiara’s lungs, and for a second, they did nothing but look at each other — _really_ look, that is, at all the little things that had changed over the past few months and couldn’t have been well captured in heavily-filtered Instagram pictures. 

She could tell he was particularly intrigued by her hair, that she had chopped on a whim in early February and was now shoulder length. His, on the contrary, was much longer than it used to be, and messier too. Kiara had a feeling it wasn’t a personal style choice, but more of a consequence of not having her around to remind him to get it cut every few months. 

‘’What the hell are you doing here, Maybank?’’ Kiara asked with a smile, a hand on her heart as if she had to make sure it was still beating.

‘’Damn, Kie,’’ he teased, but the smile on his face mirrored hers. ‘’Is that how you greet your best friend you ain’t seen in two years?’’

Kiara’s heart thumped against her ribcage. It fought for space in her chest with the air frozen in her lungs — because he was still her best friend. _He was_. It wasn’t a title that could be lost, not ever, no matter what. JJ had taken that spot and stuck his feet deep in her aorta, planted a navy blue flag to prove it, and if he ever dared move she would bleed out.

‘’Come here, dude,’’ she threw her arms around him, buried her face in the crook of his neck. He still had that same familiar smell of something Kiara could only describe as home. ‘’It’s good to see you. I mean it.’’

Chests pressed together, it felt like they had never been apart. Kiara didn’t want to let go, and she assumed JJ didn’t want to either, so they didn’t — not for another full second, at least. When he pulled away, it was a lot like losing your favourite blanket on a cold night, but her urge to pull him into another embrace disappeared when he pointed at a spot behind her, up the stairs, and asked, ‘’Those your friends?’’

JJ took a step back, all eyes on him. Kiara swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘’Yeah, yeah, I think I’ve mentioned them in the groupchat before.’’ she waved in their direction, asking them to approach. 

Mixing hometown friends and college friends was never something Kiara particularly thought of doing — not because she feared one group wouldn’t like the other, but because she often thought her college friends might not like OBX Kiara all that much, just as her hometown friends might not like Charleston Kiara. They were the same people, _but different_ , and she knew JJ would roll his eyes if her roommate played country music and Kiara pretended to like it, and make a snarky comment if he caught her eating sushi rolls for dinner even though it was her least favourite kind of food, just because it was what Cal felt like eating.

Kiara turned her head around, and could see her three friends exchanging dumbfounded looks as they stared at the tanned, blond boy in front of them. _He’s not an alien_ , she wanted to say. _He’s just JJ_. 

Cal, known for being a fast thinker and an even faster walker, put a hand on JJ’s shoulder and declared, ‘’I’m Caleigh,’’ she threw her red hair back, and hadn’t she been dating Fiona for the past year and a half, Kiara could’ve thought she was trying to flirt. ‘’But call me that and I’ll hate you forever. It’s Cal.’’

Fiona stood in between them, all brown hair and big blue eyes, forcing Cal’s hand off JJ’s shoulder. ‘’I’m Fee.’’ She gave her best Miss Ohio charming smile.

JJ glanced at Kiara. ‘’Fee and Kie, huh?’’ He teased with a familiar grin that made Kiara smile.

Before she could respond, though, Jeremiah came strolling down with a puffed out chest and chin so high up he could be facing the sky. ‘’Jeremiah,’’ he offered his hand for JJ to shake, and the boy did so reluctantly. ‘’Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’’

JJ shrugged. ‘’Didn’t tell you yet,’’ he looked an awful lot like he used to when they were sixteen and clueless Tourons would try to grind on Kiara at the Boneyard. Then, he would push them off and warn ’ _back off, asshole_ ,’ but now, he does nothing but display a crooked smile no one but Kiara could tell was fake. ‘’It’s JJ.’’

Cal poked her elbow into Kiara’s ribs. Muttered a silent ‘’ _That’s JJ?_ ’’, mouth open and green eyes wide. Kiara shushed her — not that it mattered much, because Jere stroked his pointy chin and said, ‘’Ah, _you’re_ the famous JJ. We know all about you.’’

Kiara rocked back and forth on her heels, the open space full of green suddenly feeling awfully claustrophobic. The corner of JJ’s mouth quirked up, and he bit on his bottom lip when he chanced a glance at her reddened face. 

‘’Been talking to your friends about me, Kie?’’ JJ chuckled, undeniably amused. ‘’Good things only, I hope.’’

She had told Cal and Fee that he was her best friend she used to fuck, and that broke her heart in the process. Told Jere he was the wild, blond surfer from back home, that he was, first and foremost, _home himself_ , or as close as she could get to it before even setting foot on Morehead City and catching the toll ferry to Ocracoke Island. Jere had also once asked her if she loved him, the boy from back home, and she pretended the music playing on the radio had been too loud for her to hear his question. 

‘’Always.’’ Kiara said with a smile, and it wasn’t a lie, _not really_. Because every slightly bad thing she had to say about JJ was always followed by an outpouring of all things good, of how much she loved the way he smelled and his apparent hand veins and the way he fiddled with his Zippo. 

Cal poked Kiara in the ribs again, this time around using her index finger, pressing and twisting to draw Kiara’s attention. The brown-haired girl glanced at her roommate as if she had grown two heads when she mentioned they were already late for a class, and should go now if they hoped to make it. 

Kiara instinctively looked at JJ to gauge his reaction. He only shrugged, poker-faced, and said, ‘’Go,’’ he leaned on the railing, ‘’You know my number. We’ll talk soon.’’

‘’But you’ll still be here.’’ She said, and though she intended for it to be a question, it sounded an awful lot more like a prayer. Kiara wasn’t religious, but when it came to JJ, she would often catch herself making deals with God. 

_God, if he passes this test and gets to graduate with the rest of us, I promise I’ll attend Mass every Sunday for a year_.

 _God, if he doesn’t die after he goes home tonight, I promise I’ll be nice to my mom, and I won’t swear as much, and I’ll be good,_ really _good_. 

‘’Don’t worry, Kie,’’ JJ said, beaming. ‘’I kind of go here now, so I won’t be out of your hair so soon.’’

Kiara raised an eyebrow, mouth ajar though she remained quiet for a few seconds. ‘’You do?’’ _How? Why? Since when?_

JJ smiled, that cheeky, half-smile he only used when he was the bearer of news, when he knew something the others didn’t. ‘’It’s a long story,’’ he said, ‘’I’ll tell you when you have time.’’

Jere eyed the blond boy in front of him from head to toe, arms tightly folded across his chest as if he wanted to appear bigger and stronger. Fee leaned on his shoulder, sensing her friend’s sudden displeasure, but the gesture didn’t help much, especially when Cal’s mouth curved into a smile as she said, ‘’We’re having a small get-together at our place later tonight, Kiara will text you the details,’’ she ignored Jere’s death glare, pulled Kiara by the shoulder. ‘’Come on, let’s put her going. JJ, I hope to see you there.’’

‘’Aye, aye, captain,’’ JJ pointed his index finger and cocked his thumb like a handgun, and yelled out, even though Kiara’s back was already turned, ‘’Cool hair, by the way. Looks good.’’

Kiara, understandably, could not focus or anything other than JJ Maybank and the way his blond hair still spiked up in every direction and his cut off shirt had the same holes and motor oil stains they always had. He looked and smelled and felt like the JJ from the past, the boy who had left her and whom she had left too, in return, as if they were in a competition to see who could break whose heart the most. 

She texted him her address exactly one hour after saying goodbye — figured two hours would’ve been too much time, and a half hour not enough. Over the past few months, though they did talk every once in a while, it was all through the Pogue group chat, and their private chat had been collecting dust since the end of senior year in high school.

JJ barely waited a full minute to text back. ‘ _You can just tell your friend I had explosive diarrhea or something, I don’t have to go if it’d be, I don’t know, weird, or something_.’ Kiara’s fingers hovered over the screen — typed way too many words only to delete them later, then finally settled on: ‘ _Come_.’ Plain and simple. When he didn’t immediately respond, added a ' _please’_ she hoped didn’t sound too desperate. He sent the winking face emoji, and in typical JJ fashion, it was settled.

As soon as freshman year of college was over, Kiara, Cal and Fee were packing their few bags and leaving the co-ed residence hall at the corner of Calhoun and St. Philip Streets they had been forced to live in for two long terms. They would not miss the twin metal frame beds and tiny windows (or _window_ , to be more exact), thank you very much. 

Since then, they had been living in a two bedroom down in Radcliffeborough, a five minute walk from Marion Square with its very own hardwood floors, all appliances included. _Kook perks_ , John B said when Kiara sent the pictures of the new place to the group chat. Sarah congratulated her with heart emojis in every color. Pope asked if she had checked the transit score online before signing the lease. JJ didn’t respond. 

Cal and Fee were easy roommates. Cal reminded Kiara of John B a lot, minus the usual obliviousness, and Fee was pretty much a female Pope, though she was a history buff and not all that into maths. And sure, maybe they did have the bad habit of leaving cupboards and drawers open, liked to pretend they forgot to take the trash out before going to their early classes and fucked way too loud, especially when they were wine-drunk, but Fee would also fill the place with daisies whenever she went to the Flower Market (that Kiara always felt weird about going, only because it was on Maybank Highway), Cal would buy mint chocolate chip ice cream every time she stopped at the store (even though Kiara was the only one who ate it), and they did make her feel less alone, which was no easy feat.

 _La casa de Cal, Fee and Kie_ (they had been working on a better name for the whole year they’d been living there) was also known for their famous monthly get-togethers that looked an awful lot like a grown-up version of a kegger, though instead of putting their toes in the sand and drinking warm beer out of a plastic cup, they would drink semi-expensive wine and margaritas out of actual glasses and sit around in the living room, each on a mismatched chair. It felt like playing adults, like going through your mother’s wardrobe and walking around the house in high heels and a silky dress when you’re little. 

They would also attempt to focus on full-fledged discussions surrounding the chosen amuse-bouches of the night, the American culture of excessive materialism and frivolousness and how Saudi Aramco was especially linked to modern climate change. Kiara liked it — these were topics of conversation that made her feel smart, and grown, though sometimes she’d find herself sounding a lot like her mother talking to other Kook women at the country club and immediately force herself to tone it down. 

JJ was the last one to arrive — he was forty-five minutes late, and still wearing the same clothes from early morning. That was the first moment Kiara realised though he _looked_ the same, straight out of a picture taken senior year at the Boneyard, he _wasn’t_ the same. He stood by the door awkwardly, stiff, hands in his pockets and prepared to turn back and run away any second. 

Kiara was also pretty sure she saw him flinch as soon as his eyes met hers, Jere’s arm around her shoulders while they shared a loveseat. She removed Jere’s arm pretty soon after that, let it fall limp and neglected on the pile of velvet cushions with a soft thud. 

‘’Oh, for fun,’’ Cal yelled a bit louder than usual, because she was on her third glass of red wine already. ‘’Kie, your boy is here, go save him before Jenna tries to talk to him about _whales_ ,’’ she chuckled, and Jenna slapped her on the arm. ‘’I’m sorry, but we all know how that went last time.’’

Kiara stood up, ignoring Jere’s protests behind her. Walking towards JJ felt a lot like getting on a train home, and it wasn’t exactly her fault that every sound in the room but the unsteady beating of her heart became white noise. But then JJ smiled, a soft, warm smile, and said ‘’Hey, Kie,’’ and suddenly she wasn’t so nervous anymore.

‘’You came.’’ She said, just loud enough to be heard over the music. It was Fee’s playlist, so mostly a mixture of _Clairo_ and _girl in red_. Kiara appreciated how soft it was, especially when compared to Cal’s liking of everything punk rock. 

JJ took a joint out of his cargo shorts’ front pocket. ‘’Told you I would, didn’t I?’’ He dangled it in front of Kiara, as if asking permission to light it. She shook her head yes, and he held the flame coming from his Zippo over the tip of the joint, slowly twisted it to heat it up through and through. 

‘’Well, yeah,’’ Kiara said, ‘’But I seem to remember a few times when we were younger that you said you’d show up at the country club to keep me company, and never did.’’ 

It sounded an awful lot like an accusation and Kiara regretted saying it as soon as the words left her mouth, but JJ didn’t seem to mind. ‘True, true,’’ he smiled, the joint dangling out of his mouth. ‘’But hey, I try to always do things I say I will now to, like, keep my word and shit, so that’s that.’’

Kiara took the joint from him, let her fingers brush against his chapped lips when she did so. ‘’So what you’re saying is,’’ she took a hit, drew the smoke into her mouth before inhaling into her lungs. Tilted her head to the side to exhale. ‘’You’re an adult now.’’

‘’Damn right,’’ he exclaimed. When he reached for her hand to grab the joint back, the quick moment of skin against skin was enough for air to stall in Kiara’s lungs. She was quite sure the weed wasn’t to blame. ‘’Or maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with Heyward. You know what he says.’’

‘’ _A man without his word is not a man at all_ ,’’ she did her best Heyward impersonation, voice deep and booming, and felt quite pleased with herself for making JJ chuckle. ‘’How is he, by the way?’’

Kiara knew how Mr. and Mrs. Heyward were. She facetimed Pope every other week, for a few minutes at least, to listen to how much Biochemistry had been kicking his ass and how cute he thought the boy he had met at the library was. They also talked about home a lot — for Kiara that mostly meant JJ, and for Pope, his parents. The Seafood place had been doing better than ever after some renovations, but Heyward’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be — of course the man refused to wear glasses, so Mrs. Heyward had been giving him a hard time about it.

But she didn’t expect JJ to mention all that. He shook his head, took another hit of the joint and said, ‘’Good, good,’’ he smiled, as if hoping to reassure her. They all loved Heyward, honorary father of the Pogues. ‘’Old man’s still kickin’.’’

They stood in a comfortable silence for a moment, taking the sight of each other under the dim lights in. Shared the joint between them a few more times, and Kiara could’ve sworn she tasted more JJ than the weed itself.

‘’So,’’ she said, leaned against the wall to mirror JJ’s position. ‘’You go here now, then? What happened with ‘ _college is for Kooks and smart asses_ ’?’’

JJ shrugged, one raised eyebrow. ‘’Heyward got some inheritance money from, I think it was— like, a distant aunt from Guilford County or whatever,’’ he said, and Kiara made a mental note to remember to yell at Pope for not telling her this during one of their bimonthly video calls. ‘’Said he wanted to pay me back for that old restitution money. Told him that was some bullshit, but you know Heyward.’’

She toyed with a lock of short hair, hoping to occupy her hands with something now that they had finished the joint. ‘’So you get your hands on some cold, harsh cash and decide to spend it on school?’’ Kiara chuckled, and JJ joined her. ‘’Who are you and what have you done with JJ Maybank?’’

‘’Wasn’t my first choice, trust me. Or second. Or third, for that matter,’’ he scratched his chin and his jaw, picking at the skin. ‘’But I guess Heyward figured I’d spend it all on a cool ass bike and crash the next day if I had any say in it, so he pulled this one.’’

 _Thank God for Heyward_ , Kiara’s brain whispered. Because JJ was smart, but he never thought so himself — kept making the conscious decision to never put enough effort into things he didn’t feel he was the best at. ‘ _You don’t try, you don’t fail_ ,’ he had once said after skipping a math quiz in eight grade to smoke weed and munch on Cheetos by the Avon Fishing Pier. 

_But he was smart_ — that wasn’t even a question in Kiara’s mind. She figured this not-so-little push from Heyward was a blessing in disguise, especially as it brought him to her own school of all places. Though their not-so-little blowout back in the Outer Banks had been more than enough reason for Kiara to wish to avoid him completely for a while, that wish broke in half and died out by the end of month three, giving space to that loud voice in the back of Kiara’s mind that hoped to rekindle the friendship they once had. 

Like it or not, a blast from the past showing up relentless and unforeseen to burst the bubble Kiara had created around her over the past two years felt a lot like a sign from the universe, like something bigger and stronger letting her know that _this was it_ , her one and only shot to make things right.

So Kiara put her hand on his shoulder tenderly, ignored the way it set her skin ablaze, and said, ‘’I’m really happy that you’re here, J.’’

‘’Good,’’ he said, biting back a smile that might make him look a bit too soft. ‘’I was hoping you would be.’’

And just like that, they were JJ and Kie again.

Except they weren’t.

There had been way too many versions of JJ and Kiara over the years for them to even keep track of — the ones they were at school, the ones they were at The Wreck when Kiara’s dad was watching, the ones they were around the Pogues, and the ones they were when alone and detached from the rest of the world. For a very long time they had to be a little bit of each, a constant pushing and pulling, giving only to take back, and finding a new normal was no easy feat. 

At first, they’d still go some days without talking — because Kiara was busy with her third year classes, and JJ was living in that one male-only residence hall on St. Philip Street that Kiara wouldn’t dare visit, and because sometimes it felt like they were still walking on eggshells around each other, fearing they might say the wrong thing and scare off the other again. 

But JJ was JJ, a dominating presence in Kiara’s life, a main character in her story by his own right, and by the time the leaves turned orange he had gone back to being her person, the one she grabbed coffee with in the mornings, called in the afternoons for no reason at all and told her deepest hopes and dreams to. It was like that spot had never not been his, like the two years of texting occasionally on a group chat and avoiding each other in person had never happened, not at all, not even in a nightmare. 

JJ liked Cal and Fee, and Cal and Fee liked him back. He’d sit in between them on the couch sometimes when they all gathered at the apartment to watch a movie, and more often than not, his side comments would make the two girls laugh so hard that Kiara would have to pause the movie and let them catch their breaths. Cal liked JJ so much, in fact, that she wouldn’t even tease Kiara whenever the girl looked down at her phone and smiled at a silly text about how the bathrooms in the boys’ hall looked like a scene from _C.H.U.D_.

JJ did not like Jeremiah, and the feeling was mutual. 

Kiara and JJ had been walking through Marion Square on a Tuesday morning when Jere, standing by the Statue of John C. Calhoun, eyed them so disapprovingly that JJ couldn’t help but tease, ‘’Your boyfriend's mad.’’

Kiara rolled her eyes. They had had that conversation before. ‘’How many times do I have to tell you he’s not my boyfriend?’’ 

JJ made sure to wave at the other boy as they walked right past him. He burst into laughter when Jere pouted. ‘’Well,’’ he struggled to say as he continued to giggle, ‘’He likes you.’’

‘’He does not.’’ She declared matter-of-factly.

‘’Yes, he does,’’ JJ scoffed. ‘’I’m a guy, I can tell when a guy’s into someone.’’

Kiara’s feet dragged, her shoulders tight and drawn-in. ‘’JJ, you can’t even tell your right from your left, sometimes.’’

‘’You got me there,’’ he winked at Kiara playfully, and she had to try very hard to ignore the way his baby blue eyes made her heart thud in her chest. ‘’But hey, I’m just saying, it’s kind of funny that you’re friends with the one guy in this whole entire school that looks the most like me and he just so happens to have a crush on you.’’

Kiara stopped dead in her tracks. JJ continued to walk for barely a minute before realising she had stayed behind, and turned around to see her a few steps behind, dumbfounded and mouth ajar. 

‘’Jere does not look like you,’’ she snapped, the way JJ crossed his arms tight against his chest and smirked provocatively urging her on to continue. ‘’Not at all.’’

‘’Oh, really?’’ He teased. Kiara nodded yes, all absolute and unshakeable, and JJ put his hands on his hips as he stepped closer to her until they were face to face again. ‘’Alright, let’s see. Blond hair, blue eyes, my height, around my weight, surfs, drives a motorcycle. And isn’t his name Jeremiah Jones? I mean, come on Kie, dude could literally be called JJ.’’

Well, maybe Jere did look a bit like JJ, but _only if you squinted_ , if Kiara might say so herself. And so did a ton of other boys, too — just from her Environmental Engineering class Kiara could name, at the top of her head, at least six or seven blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer-type guys, and two of them had names that started with the letter _J_. So no, she was pretty sure she hadn’t befriended Jeremiah for the sole reason she heard someone calling him JJ on their first day in Berry Hall. _Pretty sure_.

JJ threw up his hands with a chuckle. ‘’Hey, I ain’t judgin’,’’ he turned around to continue their walk towards the garage in Vandernost Street, where his bike was parked. Kiara followed him, two steps behind. ‘’Seriously, I may or may not have gone out with my fair share of turtle-loving, yellow-Vans-wearing hippie chicks named Kailyn or Karly or Kristen or whatever, so I get it.’’

Kiara bit down on her lip so hard she could taste blood. She had seen the pictures — girls who looked just like her, thanks either to the brown hair and long legs or their ‘ _Love Mother Earth_ ’ tank tops (both, sometimes), their arms lazily holding on to JJ’s shoulders, red solo cups in hand. Had blocked JJ on Instagram a couple of times because of them, though she always hit the unblock button once she had had one too many glasses of wine and figured the pain of a hundred blades cutting through her aorta had subsided. Every single time she did so, JJ had already deleted said pictures.

‘’You shouldn’t say that,’’ Kiara said, and JJ’s eyes went wide, as if he had no idea what on Earth the girl was referring to. ‘’That you went out with girls just because they looked like me. You shouldn’t say stuff like that.’’

‘’Why not?’’ JJ shrugged nonchalantly. ‘’Plus, I didn’t go out with them.’’

Kiara crossed her arms tight against her chest, picked up the pace so their shoulders were brushing as they walked and he could see the narrowing of her brown eyes. ‘’Fine, the girls you fucked, whatever, that’s not the point,’’ she blurted, ‘’I’m just saying it’s not cool. They’re real people, you know? With their own lives and brains and souls, they aren’t just some stand-ins.’’

‘’Trust me Kie, they were looking _exactly_ for the same thing I was,’’ he said, jaw clenched though he still held a smile. ‘’Besides, how’s it different from you and your good ole pal Jeremiah? He’s Walmart me. Actually, scratch that, I love Walmart— I do, really, they have some good deals. He is Cloud 9 from _Superstore_ me.’’

Kiara wiped her clammy hands on her jeans. ‘’It is _so_ not the same thing,’’ she said. It was early October and not all that hot, but she still felt the sweat forming at the back of her neck and gluing her hair to her skin. ‘’I don’t sleep with him.’’

‘’Well, good for you,’’ he didn’t look both ways before crossing the street in a hurry, and Kiara made a mental note to scold him for it later. They weren’t in the Banks anymore — _look both ways and don’t die, you asshole_ , her furrowed eyebrows said. ‘’He’s way too pretentious. Like, him and Topper would be best friends if they ever met level of pretentiousness. You can do better.’’

‘’You mean you?’’ She asked in a way it sounded like a joke, with a hint of a chuckle, but she was picking at her fingernails and pulling at dry skin around her cuticles.

‘’No,’’ he said, stiffened and poker-faced. ‘’I mean better.’’

Their conversations had the habit of blurring the lines — and that wasn’t a newfound characteristic, either. They could go from best friends to best friends who fuck occasionally to best friends who _used to_ fuck in a matter of seconds. 

Kiara was pretty sure their latest bond was the hardest of them all, that maintaining a platonic relationship with the boy who took her virginity when she was fifteen and told her he loved her three years later, only for her to leave him in the dust, was and would forever be the most back-breaking thing she had to do in her life. And that’s not to say the hard work wasn’t worth it, or that she’d rather not have him — much on the contrary. She wanted to have him, and she wanted to have him a little too much, sometimes. That scared her a lot, all the time.

It was early November when Kiara found out about JJ’s nightmares. He’d had them for almost as long as Kiara could remember, on and off since he was a little boy and his mother packed up her 90s Chevy and left to never return. The weed helped, until it didn’t.

Back in the Outer Banks, he’d smoke a blunt in the hammock outside and return twenty or thirty minutes later ready to sleep, but Kiara had noticed that lately, though he had started smoking more, his usual ten hours of sleep turned into six, and then four, and two, until he wasn’t sleeping at all. There were dark bags underneath his eyes, his lips were so dry they’d bleed if he tried to smile, and some new lines had formed around his brows and his nose that made him look a couple of years older.

Kiara figured it must have something to do with being away from home — JJ had never left the Outer Banks for more than two weeks at a time, a self-proclaimed salt-lifer, feet dug deep in the muddy sand, small island bound boy. Though he seemed more than content and very much _JJ_ whenever he spent time with Kiara or just in Kiara’s orbit, really, the bags under his eyes couldn’t lie, and neither could the uncharacteristic silence he’d fall victim to all those times there were too many people around, as if he didn’t believe there was something interesting enough he could do or say and therefore, disappearing into a corner was the best option. He was afraid to be JJ, even though that was the only thing Kiara ever wanted him to be.

That’s why she started calling him late at night, at around one in the morning, every night — because she knew he’d be awake, scared of the nightmares that would eat him alive if he dared close his eyes, and because she could also not fall asleep without making him laugh that sincere JJ laugh she loved so dearly. 

It started with them just talking about the most random things, really — like how they should make the drive down to Folly Beach whenever the current conditions were good, how JJ was ( _not_ ) dealing with his dirty laundry, the latest fight between Sarah and John B and whose side they were on (Kiara on Sarah’s, and JJ on John B’s, always), and even plans to go back to the Banks for Thanksgiving together to save on gas and whatnot. 

When Kiara realised she could get JJ to fall asleep by simply being there (virtually, even), it was a game changer. They would talk, and talk, and talk, until they had nothing left to say, and so would each busy themselves with something different while still video chatting — Kiara would work on the pile of papers she had to write as JJ’s eyes grew heavy from watching her, and when she least expected it, she’d turn around to look at her computer screen and see a sleeping JJ getting some must needed rest. 

That became a pretty common occurrence — being there for each other as they fell asleep and as they woke up in the morning without sharing a bed, without blurring the lines even more than they already had. If he had a nightmare, she’d wake up, and they would talk, and talk, and talk some more until he’d close his eyes mid-sentence and fall asleep again. In a matter of days, his brain and his body had seemed to understand that Kiara was there, and his nightmares became increasingly scarce. 

They were video chatting and drinking beer at three in the morning on a Thursday when JJ, red-eyed and groggy, said, ‘’I asked you to wait that night,’’ Kiara was caught off guard, and tilted her head in confusion. ‘’I called you, left a voicemail. And I waited outside your house too, for like, four fuckin’ hours.’’

JJ cleared his throat, trying to hold something back that seemed an awful lot like a cry. Kiara opened her mouth to talk, but nothing came out.

‘’I guess one of the neighbours must have called your parents thinking I was a kidnapper or a burglar or some shit, because your dad came out with a baseball bat, did he ever tell you that?’’ JJ asked with a dry chuckle, and Kiara shook her head no. Her parents were probably too busy yelling at her for leaving to mention that small detail. ‘’But then he realised it was me. I must have been crying, because he sat down next to me on the curb and asked, ‘ _Son, why the fuck are you crying outside my house at two in the morning?_ ’, which was real fuckin’ embarrassing, I swear.’’

Kiara laughed, but it was more of a sad laugh than anything, tears threatening to spill from her eyes — the kind of laugh that says, _fuck, so this is what I did_. She left and didn’t look back, didn’t deal with the consequences of a crying boy outside her house, made a _mostly_ conscious choice to leave him alone to do whatever he wanted with his broken heart while she glued and stitched her own, 470 miles away. 

And the most fucked up thing of all? Part of her was happy to know that he had cried, that he had sat outside her house with his heart in his hands and _cried_. Well, maybe not happy, but relieved surely, because she had cried too — Kiara had shed so many tears over the boy that for a few weeks she lived in fear she might dry out and crack, just like the brown-tipped foliage of the plants she forgot to water. 

She, for a long time, needed to know if her pain was one sided, and even called Sarah to ask once, ‘ _Does JJ look ok to you? Like, I mean— does he look happy?_ ’, to which Sarah responded after a second too long of silence, ‘ _I don’t know, Kie. You know JJ. He’s just being JJ_.’ At the time, she figured that meant that yes, he was happy, he had moved on like nothing ever happened and was living his life as normal. Now, Kiara couldn’t help but think _just being JJ_ probably meant being sad, but doing a good job at hiding it. 

JJ swallowed hard. ‘’Your dad didn’t know you had left either, so he told me to come back in the morning, talk to you then. I said that it was technically morning already, and he called me a smartass.’’

Kiara’s parents had been pretty pissed about her packing up in the middle of the night and making the trip over to Charleston without as much as a goodbye, but they got over it quickly when she sold them a stupid story about being so excited for college she just couldn’t wait a second longer. 

She did always have a feeling her father knew something was up, but he never brought it up — only eyed her semi-curiously when he went to visit her on campus the following weekend and found a polaroid of her and JJ crumpled up in the garbage can. Kiara picked the picture up, flattened it with an iron and removed most of the creases as soon as her dad left, and she could’ve sworn he smiled the next time he was over for a visit and caught a glimpse of the polaroid glued to the wall alongside dolphin stickers and old movie tickets.

They were quiet for a minute. Kiara figured JJ might have something else to say, but he did nothing but pinch the bridge of his nose and close his eyes shut as if he had just been punched in the gut. 

‘’I think I was just embarrassed,’’ she admitted, looking away from the screen. It felt easier to talk about this out loud if she didn’t have to stare right into JJ’s blue eyes as she did so. ‘’It doesn’t even sound like me at all, but that’s what it was. You bringing that girl and saying those things felt a lot like being rejected, and I guess I just didn’t want to see Pope and JB the next day and get that fucking pity look, like, ‘ _Hey, I’m sorry you just got dumped in front of two dozen people, and I’m sorry we were two of those people and now will have to make fun of you for as long as you live_ ’, you know?’’

‘’They wouldn’t have done that,’’ JJ said, and though logically Kiara knew that Pope and John B were her friends and wouldn’t want to hurt her in any way, shape or form, it was still too much of a risk to take — a silent pity look would’ve been enough to turn her to dust. ‘’And I wasn’t, fuck— I wasn’t rejecting you, Kie. I was going to ask you to go with me to that stupid party, really, I was,’’ he said, and then covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. ‘’But then I didn’t, I don’t know why. I guess maybe I just thought you’d have said no. So I didn’t.’’

‘ _You don’t try, you don’t fail_ ’, a thirteen year old JJ used to say. But then an eighteen year old JJ didn’t try, and failed anyway. Because Kiara was pretty sure she would’ve said yes — even now, after all this time, she’d still say yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. 

‘’Did you like her at all?’’ Kiara asked.

JJ shook his head no, palms still pressed against his eyes. When he removed his hands, let them hit his desk with a loud thud, his eyes were so red and swollen you could barely see the blue in them. 

‘’I pretended it was you the whole time,’’ he said. ‘’I always do.’’

Kiara tipped her chair back. Felt her heart sink when her brain tricked her body into thinking she was about to fall. ‘’You can’t do that to people, JJ. It’s not fair.’’ 

‘’I wouldn’t if I could help it,’’ he sighed, stone-faced. ‘’You’re just always in my head, and I can’t fuckin’ get you out.’’

He fell asleep pretty quickly after that — Kiara thought about ending the call, but couldn’t put herself through the motions of clicking the button and slamming her laptop shut, couldn’t do that to him (or to herself, though that was a whole different matter). So she stayed, like she should have stayed before, and was still there when he woke up.

Neither of them mentioned their conversation the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. They simply continued to wake up to each other, have breakfast together at that small family owned cafe at the corner of Ann Street, walk to class through Marion Square, watch movies all throughout the afternoon and cook dinner with Cal and Fee, talk on their computers, fall asleep to each other and repeat. 

On Saturdays, they started to religiously make the twenty-minute drive down to Folly Beach. Cal and Fee went with them once or twice, but it was mostly a JJ and Kie thing — she hoped it would stay that way. JJ was more himself in those times than she had seen in a while, with a surfboard under one arm and Kiara in the other, as if that’s the way things were supposed to be like, _always_. 

Though it was the middle of Fall, it was still warm enough, and the sun seemed to welcome them with open warms on every early Saturday morning. They would swim, surf, drink cold beers and eat cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes (because they were adults, after all), and every time, right before it was about to get dark and chilly, JJ would take a silent walk close to the water while Kiara busied herself with a book, lying in the sand. 

It felt almost too contemplative and philosophical for JJ, but then one afternoon, after a few Saturday visits to Folly Beach, he went over to her apartment in Radcliffeborough unannounced and told her to close her eyes and open her hands. Kiara had been friends with boys for most of her life, so she did so with one eye slightly open, her back pressing against the countertop. She felt the cold roughness in the palms of her hands and knew what they were before even opening her eyes — at least a dozen seashells, small and colorful, in all different shapes.

‘’To make up for all the time I went without giving you one.’’ He explained, twisting the rings on his fingers as he waited for her reaction. 

Kiara’s heart thudded so loud in her chest she could hear the ringing in her ears. She put the seashells in a little empty bowl by the sink, and only because she didn’t know what to do when JJ was standing _this_ close to her, when he smelled like the lavender laundry detergent she lended him and when his blond hair was so charmingly sweaty and covered in sand, Kiara figured it’d be best to do what she’d been wanting to since she saw him that first time in early August — grab a handful of his shirt and pull him in, that is.

His mouth fell open as the tips of their noses pressed together, his eyelashes batting softly against Kiara’s skin. ‘’What are you doing?’’ JJ asked, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

‘’This.’’ She grasped his lower lip between her teeth, ran her tongue along the line of his upper lip just so see his eyes darken. Just because she could.

‘’I thought we were going to be friends this time around.’’ He murmured, but his voice came low and skeptical, like he didn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

‘’We’ve always been friends,’’ Kiara said, already missing the way his lips felt against hers. ‘’But we’ve never been _just_ friends. I don’t think we could ever be.’’

When he didn’t move for a minute, just stood there silently as he studied her flushed face and chest that fell and rose with rapid breaths, Kiara feared she might have read it all wrong. Ever since she saw him by the stairs of Riggleman Hall, an embarrassingly big part of her hoped that she was the reason why he came, that she was the motive and the consequence and everything in between. She wasn’t so sure this had been the case, now.

‘’I’m—,’’ she stuttered, heart falling into her feet. Took a step back until they were no longer chest-to-chest, and barely noticed when JJ did the opposite, taking a step forward. ‘’—I’m sorry. Fuck,’’ Kiara chuckled awkwardly in a desperate attempt to get her out of that situation — of being rejected again. ‘’For a second there I just thought maybe you had a crush on me or something.’’

‘’Isn’t it obvious, Kiara?’’ 

She shook her head no. ‘’It’s never really obvious what you want.’’

JJ glared at Kiara in the way he would whenever they had serious, meaningful conversations that usually ended with Kiara telling him to stop being a dick and JJ storming off. But the self-satisfied smirk playing across his lips proved otherwise — he wasn’t arming himself to fight, but preparing himself to disarm her. And he knew he had won before it even began. 

‘’I had a crush on you when we were eleven and you always gave me the sweet potato fries your dad made you for lunch. You told everyone you hated sweet potato fries, but I know they’re like, your favourite kind of fries ever, especially your dad’s, and you only gave them to me because you knew I hadn’t brought anything to eat,’’ he said, glancing down at her in a way that was so all-consuming Kiara feared her chest might burst open. ‘’And I also had a crush on you when we were thirteen and even I forgot my own birthday, but not you. You put my first ever friendship bracelet in my locker for me to find that morning and then you sang me happy birthday over a muffin in the cafeteria. I told you it was cheesy as hell but no one had sang happy birthday to me in years, so that was real fuckin’ cool, you know? I promised myself I’d never forget your birthday after that, so I got a stick and poke tattoo to remember.’’

Kiara tilted her head to the side. ‘’You did what?’’ She asked breathlessly.

He pulled the collar of his shirt with one middle finger to leave his clavicle exposed, and pointed at a few tiny black dots that Kiara had always assumed were birthmarks. ‘’The two biggest spots are for the month, February. And then the four smallest for the day.’’

Kiara gave him a puzzled smile, the image of a thirteen year old JJ giving himself a tattoo just to make sure he’d never forget her birthday causing her brain to short circuit. She pictured JJ looking at himself in the mirror, counting the little black dots on his skin as a reminder not only of Kiara’s birthday, but of Kiara herself, and just how much she meant to him — and hopefully, just how much he meant to her in return. 

‘’JJ Maybank, I can’t believe your crazy ass.’’ She smiled, gaze fixed on his collarbone, and he let out a chuckle.

‘’Well, I’m just saying you’re right,’’ he continued, still tugging at the collar of his shirt. ‘’I had a crush on you.’’

Kiara stared at him blankly as she chewed the inside of her mouth. ‘’ _Had_?’’

‘’I don’t have a crush on you anymore, if that’s what you’re asking,’’ he declared so matter-of-factly, not a doubt in his voice, that Kiara felt a tight fist clench around her heart. ‘’That’s kid’s stuff. I’ve been in love with you since I kissed you for the first time. I didn’t get it right away, I mean— I think I had never heard my parents say _I love you_ to each other, not once, and my dad would only said he loved me after beating me bloody, and the last time my mom said she loved me was just as she was driving away from me.’’

She thought back to the time he told her he loved her and she drove away in response. Kiara didn’t quite believe him then — figured he loved her in the way he loved Pope and John B, that he was doing nothing but grasping at straws, desperately trying to find a way not even to get her to stay, but to get her to not be angry at him. _Liar was_ the first thing that went through her head. ‘ _You’ve always been a liar, JJ Maybank, but I never thought you’d lie to me about something like that’_ , she had even typed after he went radio silent for three weeks, only to delete it. 

But she could see it with enough clarity now, perhaps thanks to the way his usually steady voice broke when she didn’t respond right away, or maybe the shine in his baby blue eyes that screamed _please, please love me back_ — he loved her. He loved her then, even though he had her and couldn’t say, and he loved her now, even though he didn’t have her and could say it at last. 

And Kiara knew, deep down, that she probably, _most definitely_ , had loved him for a very long time too. She just didn’t know how much until he tilted her head to the side with his thumb, pressed a light kiss on her exposed neck, and said ‘’I was going to say I couldn’t deal with us being a secret again,’’ he paused to kiss the other side of her neck, let his lips linger long enough for goosebumps to flood her skin. ‘’But fuck, I’ll honestly have you in any way you let me. Ask me to be your secret and I will.’’

He was giving her an out, offering her a one way ticket to have him behind closed doors like she used to.

This time, she didn’t plan on taking it.

‘’JJ,’’ she cupped his face in her hands and made him meet her gaze. ‘’Ask me to be your girlfriend and I will.’’

He squeezed his eyes shut and lifted his arms above his head, tugging at his hair. ‘’Don’t mess with me,’’ he said after two deep breaths. ‘’Are you messing with me?’’

JJ lowered his arms and his hands found their way back to Kiara’s bare hips, right where her tank top had ridden up. His fingertips sunk into her skin as the cool metal from his rings caused a familiar heat to form in the pit of her stomach. 

Kiara chuckled, finding his wide eyes and raised eyebrows quite amusing. All this time she had been walking on eggshells around him, scared of saying the wrong thing, unsure of where he stood when every sign she needed was _right there_. 

‘’Just ask.’’ Kiara said with a soft smile she hoped was reassuring enough.

JJ took a step closer to make sure there was no space left between them. Kiara’s breath hitched in her lungs when he kissed her softly, leisurely, like they had all the time in the world and could spend it as they pleased. 

The tenderness of his mouth made Kiara’s heart ache. ‘’Be my girl,’’ he mumbled against her lips, and though she nodded enthusiastically, grinning bright and teary-eyed, he still asked, ‘’Say you’ll be my girl.’’

‘’I’m your girl.’’ 

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr @jiaaras !! recommend me a song or a show or let's just scream about ships


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